This invention relates to a device for solidifying sludgy material in a surface layer, and more particularly to a device for setting and reforming the surface layer of accumulated sludge in lakes, sea and other places through natural deposition or artificial dumping of industrial wastes. The device is specifically designed firstly to provide the sludgy surface layer with bearing capacity to allow light equipments or the like to be mounted thereon as a preliminary step when improving the deeper layers, secondly to prevent generation of offensive odor from the sludge pits or swamps, thirdly to prevent outflow of the sludge resulting from inflow of rain water, and finally to effectively utilize land for construction of roads or buildings.
As methods for treatment of the sludgy deposits, A method is generally employed to cover the sludge surface with earth fills to the depth of 2 to 3 meters. This method, however, involves many difficult problems, for instance, inavailability of soil to fill in great quantity in usual case and also environmental pollution such as noise, tremor, dust caused by transportation of earth fills. Furthermore, reformation by earth fills is infeasible for a deep pit or basin, and gathering, transporting and dumping of the earth fills occasionally cost a lot.
Another method is also employed, in some cases, to agitate the sludge by an agitator in place of its deposition while simultaneously injecting chemical hardener into the agitated sludge layer thereby to solidify it.
Among the processors conventionally in the aforementioned methods for treating the surface sludge, a typical one which is well known is that the suspended agitating shafts provided with agitating blades are operatively connected to the driving means. In such processor, the range of agitation by the blades attached in right angle to each agitating shaft is divided along the direction of the vertical section of the processor, so that no sufficient agitation is expected unless being performed by suspending the processor in any given location with moving it up and down. That is, according to the conventional sludge processor, the sludge is agitated and kneaded by moving the agitating blades up and down at a fixed location to treat a unit volume of the sludge, and then the processor is hoisted up, moved horizontally and then again brought down to treat the next batch of the sludge. These operations are repeated until the sludge in a given area is completely worked upon. Such repetition of operations requires much time and labor and results in low working efficiency.